Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk State legislators including Representatives Fred Wilms and Gail Lavielle, answer questions and talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of Norwalk annual Pie and Politics event Saturday, March 19, 2016 in the Norwalk Police Department Community Room.

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk State legislators including Representatives Fred Wilms and Gail Lavielle, answer questions and talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk resident Spike Reed poses a question as Norwalk State legislators talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of Norwalk annual Pie and Politics event Saturday, March 19, 2016 in the Norwalk Police Department Community Room.

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk resident Spike Reed poses a question as Norwalk State legislators talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of Norwalk annual Pie and

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Moderator Darnell D. Crosland listens as Norwalk State legislators answer questions and talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of Norwalk annual Pie and Politics event Saturday, March 19, 2016 in the Norwalk Police Department Community Room.

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Moderator Darnell D. Crosland listens as Norwalk State legislators answer questions and talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of Norwalk annual

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk State legislators including Representative Gail Lavielle, Senator Bob Duff and Representative Bruce Morris, answer questions and talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of Norwalk annual Pie and Politics event Saturday, March 19, 2016 in the Norwalk Police Department Community Room.

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk State legislators including Representatives Terrie Wood, Fred Wilms, and Gail Lavielle answer questions and talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of Norwalk annual Pie and Politics event Saturday, March 19, 2016 in the Norwalk Police Department Community Room.

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk State legislators including Representatives Terrie Wood, Fred Wilms, and Gail Lavielle answer questions and talk about the current legislative session during The League of

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk resident Scott Kimmich poses a question as Norwalk State legislators talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of Norwalk annual Pie and Politics event Saturday, March 19, 2016 in the Norwalk Police Department Community Room.

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk resident Scott Kimmich poses a question as Norwalk State legislators talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of Norwalk annual Pie and

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk State legislators including Representatives Chris Perone and Terrie Wood answer questions and talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of Norwalk annual Pie and Politics event Saturday, March 19, 2016 in the Norwalk Police Department Community Room.

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk State legislators including Representatives Chris Perone and Terrie Wood answer questions and talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk State legislators including Representatives Terrie Wood and Fred Wilms answer questions and talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of Norwalk annual Pie and Politics event Saturday, March 19, 2016 in the Norwalk Police Department Community Room.

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk State legislators including Representatives Terrie Wood and Fred Wilms answer questions and talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk resident John Mosby poses a question as Norwalk State legislators talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of Norwalk annual Pie and Politics event Saturday, March 19, 2016 in the Norwalk Police Department Community Room.

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk resident John Mosby poses a question as Norwalk State legislators talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of Norwalk annual Pie and

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk State legislators including Representatives Chris Perone, Fred Wilms and Gail Lavielle, and Senator Bob Duff answer questions and talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of Norwalk annual Pie and Politics event Saturday, March 19, 2016 in the Norwalk Police Department Community Room.

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk State legislators including Representatives Gail Lavielle and Senator Bob Duff answer questions and talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of Norwalk annual Pie and Politics event Saturday, March 19, 2016 in the Norwalk Police Department Community Room.

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk State legislators including Representatives Gail Lavielle and Senator Bob Duff answer questions and talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Norwalk State legislators including Representatives Gail Lavielle, Senator Bob Duff and Representative Bruce Morris answer questions and talk about the current legislative session during The League of Women Voters of Norwalk annual Pie and Politics event Saturday, March 19, 2016 in the Norwalk Police Department Community Room.

NORWALK — The League of Women Voters (LWV) of Norwalk held their annual “Pie and Politics” event at the Norwalk Police Department on Saturday morning, where state representatives discussed such hot topics as the state budget, casinos, zoning and education with the attendees.

“The LWV is always intent that all citizens are educated and can talk to their legislators and hear what’s going on. It’s very important that they do,” said Mary Oster, LWV community leader.

State Reps. Chris Perone (D-137), Bruce Morris (D-140), Terrie Wood (R-141), Fred Wilms (R-142), Gail Lavielle (R-143) and state Sen. Bob Duff were on the panel to answer questions for the attendees. Attorney Darnell D. Crosland was the moderator for the discussion. The attendees were encouraged to ask questions based on the current legislative session so that the voters can understand what is going on in Hartford.

“We have to pick our leaders to go to Hartford to express our interests,” said Crosland. “We have to trust people to lead us. We may not always agree with our leaders ... but we just need to work through them.”

The topic that dominated most of the discussion was the state’s budget and current deficit.

“Unlike the United States, Connecticut does have a balanced budget requirement, so every year revenues and expenses must balance out when the budget is put in and voted on,” said Lavielle. “When all these inconsistencies come up during the course of the two-year cycle, (they) have to be fixed if they reach a certain gap (when) expenses are that much bigger than revenues. And it used to happen maybe once a year, once every two years — now its happening every month. Right now we are looking at a $266 million deficit for the current year.”

Lavielle added that this is important because when the budget goes into a deficit, essential infrastructure and health services get their budgets cut.

“The budget’s numbers are off this fiscal year, (even) after the second largest tax increase in our state’s history where they increased the budget by $2 billion,” said Wood. “So we’ve had two enormous tax increases, we’ve had GE leave the state, we’ve had hedgefunds leave the state, people are leaving the state ...”

Duff explained to the voters what the extra $2 billion in the budget was funding.

“What has happened since the recession of 2008 is that we have seen growth, we just have not seen the traditional growth that we have seen historically post-recessions here in Connecticut.,” said Duff. “But we’ve also ... taken away resources where we would normally put resources. For instance, over the last five years, we have paid down pensions and funded them to tune it to $1.2 billion a year ... We are catching up to those payments right now and thats an extra billion dollars in our budget. In addition to that, we are now diverting some of the sales tax to help reservation projects and also to sale tax sharing and car tax relief as well.”

Attendee Spike Reed asked the panel about the differences in public and private sector benefits plans.

“What we need to do to solve this is really very simple ... we need to renegotiate with our (state) employees their compensation contracts and we need to align them with those in the private sector as quickly as possible,” said Wilms.

Rep. Morris reminded the voters that discussing and planning the state budget is not as easy as most people would think.

“Everyone has a special interest for what they really want,” said Morris. “Gov. Malloy did that first tax increase because we invested in things that would stop the unsustainable expenses that we had. We actually got an agreement from them that basically saves us $1 billion a year.”

Commercial casinos in Connecticut were also discussed, where Perone took the lead on the responses.

“A casino won’t be coming to Norwalk anytime soon,” said Perone. “Basically the issue is that MGM is building a casino in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts’ tribes felt rightly that their economic interests were threatened by that so ... what they want to do ... is collect requests for proposals from different municipalities that would want to have a casino in Connecticut — with the idea that they would be looking north of Hartford to intercept traffic out of the state of Connecticut on their way to Springfield.”